| Thanks for reading The Briefing, our nightly column where we break down the day's news. If you like what you see, I encourage you to subscribe to our reporting here.
Greetings! A global trade war could get very ugly for big tech—and not just for importers of physical products, like Apple. A Financial Times report on Thursday quoted the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, as suggesting that Europe could retaliate against U.S. tariffs by imposing a levy on digital ad revenues generated by companies like Meta Platforms and Google in Europe. OK, even for a European regulator, that idea is nuts. And it should worry all tech investors. Tariffs are designed to protect local industry from cheap imports. Meta and Google are most definitely not flooding Europe's digital ad market with cheap ad space. If anything, it's the opposite: Advertisers complain that buying space on the big platforms is too expensive. If a homegrown ad platform appeared, it would have no problems competing on price. But advertisers prefer to spend money on the U.S. platforms because they're the most effective outlets for driving sales. (As we wrote today, advertisers rethinking their spending plans because of economic uncertainty were less likely to cut spending on Meta, Amazon and Google than on other media for that reason). Taxing U.S. tech companies' European ad revenues would be sure to spark further retaliatory moves from the Trump administration (it's already imposing tariffs of 145% on China in response to that country's retaliation). While there's a good chance sanity would prevail in the end, that could take a while. In the meantime, the situation could really squeeze companies like Meta and Google. Europe accounted for 23% of Meta's 2024 revenue, while the Europe, Middle East, Africa region generated 29% of Google parent Alphabet's revenue. In other words, Europe is a hugely important region for these companies. Until now, the tech companies seen as most directly vulnerable to tariffs have been Apple, Tesla and the chipmakers. Von der Leyen's statements suggest companies that sell advertising, and other services, can't relax. Google Cloud's annual developer conference is something of a family affair. On Wednesday, for instance, in his keynote address, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian name-checked data storage firm NetApp, which is working with Google on artificial intelligence services (the two companies announced details of their partnership here). It's no secret that NetApp's CEO is his twin brother George (who, not surprisingly, looks just like him—do they ever switch places?). But that's not the only family connection showing up at the conference. The entertainment on Thursday night includes singer Tate Renner, who is none other than the son of Google Cloud's global revenue president, Matt Renner. How'd Tate score that gig? • Donald Trump signed an order Wednesday targeting Christopher Krebs, a critic of the president and the former head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency during the first Trump administration. In the Wednesday order, Trump took aim at Krebs for disputing Trump's baseless claims that the 2020 election was "stolen." • Honeycomb, a San Francisco–based startup that helps engineers identify and resolve bugs, has acquired Grit, a coding startup that helps companies maintain their software and code base, Honeycomb CEO Christine Yen confirmed. • Amazon CEO Andy Jassy earned $40.1 million last year, according to the company's proxy statement published on Thursday. That figure includes stock that vested during the year, as well as salary, and was a 37% increase from the $29.2 million Jassy earned in 2023. • Wayve, an eight-year-old autonomous driving software company, said Thursday that its self-driving technology will be used in Nissan's ProPilot assisted driving feature starting next year. The Information Weekend covers what happens when Silicon Valley logs off—the trends and people shaping culture, technology and everything in between. Subscribe for free today. | 
0 comentários:
Postar um comentário